Friday, June 11, 2010

My second Erlangen Diary - Day 1 continued

As usual I´m not up to date so I have to make a public announcement first. As you may have noticed there is a new link in the link section called SPOILER ALERT, that is the new location for PANEL WARS.

It´s totally cool, totally up to date on all things I´m not - like news on the Captain America movie - and still totally in german. So now you can jump to the blog from here and sorry man that it took me so long to get the link up.

Time now for more on my adventures in Erlangen. Now there has been a few days since my last entry, because on Wednesday I decided to go to my comicshop.

I must have overextended myself because on Thursday I was so wasted all I could do was lie in bed and eat. I also went out to buy some stuff and in the afternoon I was at least strong enough that I could burn some stuff on CDs. It´s unbelievable how much junk you collect in just a few months. Just when I thought I was finished I found another folder with 15 GBs of stuff so I didn´t do much else the rest of the day. Today I´m at least well enough to continue my travel diary.

Back to my visit to the comicshop, I thought I could do a post about my second experience with FREE COMIC BOOK DAY but so far only two of the books I ordered had arrived. In fact there was not much in my comicbag so I had to order a lot of stuff online the next day. Lately I find less and less comics I can buy outside my subscription in the comicshop and have to rely more and more on online comicshops.

And there are also less and less comics in my bag. My brother always says that my bag is too full but the trip to the comicshop costs money so maybe I should wait one or two months for my next trip. Speaking of my brothers : it has been mentioned that reading my blog I conceive the image of being cool while being quite the opposite by the stuff I omit.

Now to make it quite clear : this blog is not about me. It´s about comics first and foremost and if I mention personal stuff it´s mostly in the vein of " Yesterday I didn´t get to post because I watched NINJA ASSASIN ( wicked movie by the way ) " and such stuff. I try not to bore the readers with too much detail of my personal life. Okay, sometimes I just have to rant but I try to keep it to a minimum.

But so there are no misconceptions about my persona : I am not cool. I never have been cool. And I probably never will be cool. In fact I´m the complete antithesis of coolness. Coolness : Normal universe. Subzero : Bizarro universe. I mean I like to watch Spongebob Squarepants. That should be a dead giveaway. No really, I´m short, I´m overweight, I´m totally out of shape and I´m a total whiner.

So for the record : I´m not cool. If, by reading the blog, you should get the misconception that I am in fact the coolest cat to ever walk the planet I want to apologize in advance. On the other side there´s not much I can do about it because it seems to be caused by stuff I don´t even write.

Back to my visit at the comicshop, one of the employees was so nice to give me a few free comics from GRATIS COMIC TAG. Since I already have 10 of the 30 comics I want to wait and see if I can get the other 20. Initially I thought I could collect them all in Erlangen but as always my youthful ideas were crushed by the reality of me being totally unfit. Which brings us finally back to the continuation from part 1 of my first day in Erlangen.

It´s a bit difficult to trace back the events one week later but according to the schedule the panel called eBook, iPhone, Playstation & Co about the future of comics was to take place at 15.00 hours so it must have been around 14.45 when I made my second purchase of the day. Because I remember that the nice guys at LASKA were worried about having time to finish the sketch for me as there were only 15 minutes left before the panel started. In fact I was at quite a few panels this time, although I have to admit that I was always sitting in the last row. Because of sleep deprivation I fell asleep during almost all of them so I thought it would be a good idea to stay at the back and not draw too much attention to myself.

At the table of LASKA COMICS I got the newest issue LASKA COMIX 9 that had a new story of LUZIE AUS DER HÖLLE......HÖLLE, HÖLLE.....( Lucy from Hell ) and the LUZIE AUS DER HÖLLE collection that had been published by SCHWARZER TURM that collected all the old stories. So with these two comics I had collected them all ! I tried to find a picture of the cover to LASKA COMIX 9 because it´s pretty cool and it´s also a hommage to the cover of AVENGERS 1 ( the original one not the new one by John Romita Jr. ). But I couldn´t find it online.

Anyway, my american readers might know the name LASKA COMIX because a few years ago they did a comic called KAKTUS,

followed by a second part that was done entirely without words and because of that it was also published in Amerika. The second part is - of course - also done completely without words.

I´m a big fan of the distinct LASKA art style

which is also apparent in the LUCY FROM HELL ( I´m using the english name from now on ) pages. LUCY FROM HELL is the story of Lucy Lucifer, daughter of the devil with the same name and her pet dragon ( demondog ? ) Samsara ( or short Sam ). They escape hell for a shopping trip but after a failed assasination attempt they try to find out who is behind it all.

Not the most original plot but thanks to the charming execution and a lot of inside jokes, like Lucy´s special move that´s called the Fing Fang Foom Flash or the angel of death, who looks like the cat Son Goku has to deafeat to drink the water that gives special strength ( DRAGONBALL readers know what I´m talking about ), it´s a funny and entertaining read.

While the collection is a normal sized US comic format bookshelf with 48 pages LASKA COMIX 9 is in the european album size and has 32 pages. Besides the 11 page LUCY FROM HELL story there are also other short stories and while the first one is clearly the best ( or at least my favorite ) the rest of the book is also cool.

Sadly I couldn´t find any preview pages but here are some reviews and stuff. Sorry, once again it´s all in german :

You can also get it from amazon ( if they have it in stock ), directly from SCHWARZER TURM or at any good comicshop.

Directly after getting a really cool sketch of Lucy for my new big sketchbook I went to the e-book panel with David Boller from Zampano Comics, Horst Gotta from Splitter, Steve Jones from comicstars.de, Steffen Volkmer from MyComics.de and a few others. Even if the discussion was quite interesting, and I was relieved that the old urban legend about printed comics being obsloete in a few years wasn´t brought up, I fell asleep a few times. I hadn´t had much sleep prior to Erlangen and I also was very tired from all the walking during the convention.

Exiting the room I met up with my brother who had - like always - gone of in a different direction doing who knows what. In some cases I think it´s better not to know all the things he does at conventions. We decided to go back to the car but like always we didn´t find it. Then we split up and each one of us found the way back to the car seperately but went back to look for the other one. So it took us quite some time to get back to the car. The good thing was that once we had found the way it was quite easy to get back to the car and we decided to park the car at the same place whenever possible.

I think we went back and got lost in the convention once again. I found a vendors table were they were selling all trades and hardcovers at ten EURO and at first I had a pile of ten books but because of my limited budget I had to cut it down to two. I decided on the 2 hardcovers I would buy anyway : THE STAND - CAPTAIN TRIPPS and SPIDER - MAN - NEW WAYS TO DIE. I´m avoiding most Spider - Man comics because of the whole BRAND NEW DAY s - word but John Romita Jr´s art is just too cool for words. I hope I can do reviews in some upcoming posts.

After this I had already spent the main part of my comic budget and since we were both tired and it was only half an hour till closing time we went looking for the guys from splashpages. Before the convention I had offered to translate in the event that they planned on doing an interview with Juan Gimenez so we wanted to ask if there was already a date. Afterwards we went to our respective hotels which was pretty easy thanks to the navigation system.

Back when we bought it I wasn´t sure if that was such a necessary acquisiton but it has since been really helpful in a few occasions. With it my brother checked in ( and we left my comicbag in his room which really bummed me ) before bringing me to my hotel where I did another one of my patented stray runs. I don´t know what it is but when it comes to following directions I´m like pirate bounty hunter Lorenar Zorro from ONE PIECE. The room I had booked was at another installation of the AB HOTEL which was basically just across the street but thanks to my superior navigation skills I took a five minute detour that lead once around the block before crossing the street. And just before arriving the strap of my bag broke so that I had the bag in my suitcase for the rest of the convention. Which may very well have been a blessing in disguise because I don´t know if I wouldn´t have gotten a heart attack if I had to carry the bag on the shoulder for the rest of the convention.

Naturally my room was at the third floor and the room was pretty small but for 35 EUROS ( with breakfast included ) it wasn´t too bad. Sadly I couldn´t sleep very good in it because of my shoulder and because I couldn´t put it against the wall but that´s my personal problem.

So much for now as it´s once again time to wrap things up. We still got to cover what went on at the country party ín the next part so stay tuned. I´m off to my brother´s room to borrow his issues of KOMMISSAR FRÖHLICH since I read a review today that recommends them highly.

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About Me

Working stiff at day, secret crimefighting blogger at night I was born into a world I never made. I always loved comics and even wrote and drew some. Together with my brother who is much more interested in making comics we even self-published a comic called POWER FREAKS that is infamous in Germany. Due to financial troubles and artistic differences sadly there has been only one issue so far. Being more of a reader than a collector of comics I always read the foreign versions of the american comics what led me to start this little blog. If you have any comment ( or want to send me some review copies ) please drop me a line in the comment section or send me an e - mail.